


She's My Kind Of Girl

by cruisedirector



Category: Mamma Mia! (2008)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Character Death Fix, F/M, POV First Person, Polyamory, References to ABBA, Song Lyrics, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 01:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15377367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector
Summary: No more carefree laughter.  Silence ever after.  Spoilers forMamma Mia: Here We Go Again.





	She's My Kind Of Girl

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on three reviews and two trailers for _Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again_ , since now that I know the crucial plot point, I have no interest in seeing the movie. I don't care how cute the ABBA numbers are; those characters all deserved better. I may be wrong about some details because of not having seen the movie, but I know terrible retconning when I hear about it. Not betaed, though may be edited when I'm less angry.

You probably have heard the song-and-dance version of this tale that Sophie and Ruby want you to know. It's the version where Donna, tragically, is no longer with any of us, and Sam and Sophie have bravely carried on in her name. It's a great story to attract people to the Bella Donna Inn -- a woman works all her life to make the place spectacular, yet can't manage it until a late rescue by the love of her life. Then, tragically, just when things are going as beautifully as any woman could dream, she dies, leaving her daughter and her husband to carry on her legacy.

It's a great story, but it isn't true. So many things get left out. For one thing, as soon as Sam and I learned Donna had slept with Bill, we knew where Sophie's big blue eyes had come from. It isn't easy to say, but even Sophie knew the name of the game. Bill gave her those eyes and that hair and some of that wanderlust. It never mattered to me that Sophie wasn't mine, but I believe it mattered to Bill that she was his, so much so that it brought him back into Donna's orbit after avoiding her for all those years while sailing around the islands, visiting the relatives he improbably had in Greece.

Tanya once told me that Ruby had called Donna a slut and kept Donna from returning home, but that isn't the story Ruby's telling now. Now it's that Donna wanted to stay in the islands forever, even though Donna was stuck on one island with her daughter for the most part instead of having colorful adventures. Tanya also told me that Ruby's shaming of Donna is the reason such a brave woman never sought out any of her boyfriends to try to find out which one was Sophie's father. She didn't think her daughter would want to know if it would lead to the same humiliation that Donna herself had suffered over an out-of-wedlock birth. 

If Donna had asked me when she first found out she was pregnant, I wouldn't have cared that some other man might have connected the dots before I did. Ring ring! I'd have agreed to be Sophie's father, showered her with love and presents, paid for the best schools, even taken care of her mother, without ever demanding a blood test to prove my paternity. It would have been a gift to all of us, especially to me while I was facing the fact that I would never raise a child of my own. People need love. But, of course, Donna didn't ask me. I don't think it matters to her or to any of them that I'm gay, but it does put me outside their current circle of generational bliss, in which hopes, traditions, and responsibilities are passed (or purposefully avoided) from one to the next. The king has lost his crown.

Ruby won't tell anyone what she considers to be the terrible truth about Bill for the same reason Sophie won't, but her mother knew. It's obvious, looking at Bill and Sophie together, that Bill's seed was the winner and the winner takes it all in a paternity case, even if Sam has a claim as her lawful stepfather and I've been the most conscientious about behaving like a dad, never forgetting a birthday or anniversary and bragging about her impending motherhood as if it were my own secret to give away. Even someone as self-absorbed as Ruby can see that much. But here's the truth about Bill. He didn't care that maybe Donna always loved Sam the most. He didn't care that Rosie really loved him, either. Once he decided to admit to himself what he was really running from, he just wanted Donna, if it wasn't too late. 

The truth is that one day, after looking at everything Donna had always thought she wanted -- her hotel, her life with Sam -- it felt like in a prison. She got onto Bill's boat the way old friends do and she didn't come back. She was still the girl who kissed the teacher. She was still the dancing queen. She moved like a flame of fire no one could tame. And just like that, like an image passing by, she went away. Sam walked through old familiar rooms, tears in his eyes, but there was nothing he could do.

Yet no one else is enchained by sorrow. Didn't you wonder how the heartaches came and went so fast? Doesn't it seem odd that no one talks about how Donna died, they just let the music speak? The people who claim to have loved her most couldn't be bothered with constructing a believable story about her end. They dismiss her like an angel passing through the room. I admit that the truth would make a terrible tourist brochure: "Come stay at the inn named for the founder who ran away!" Instead they sell the place with song and dance, with occasional performances by Donna's old bandmates and her spectacular showgirl mother, with Sophie's fresh-faced beauty and the sexy lure of a fountain that makes passions overflow.

I'm not even sure I blame them. I can say thank you for the music and still admit that Donna left a lot of wreckage behind when she ran away. Sometimes when I scream, there's a voice in me that says, "You shouldn't be so mean."

But the real Donna is so much more interesting than the valedictorian who kept insisting she wanted to see the world, then only saw Paris and Kalokairi. She settled away from her best friends, away from her family...why? Did she think they all would judge her for being the kind of girl who insisted she would not have sex with men she barely knew, then reveled in it? Over the years, did she turn into the sort of woman who judged the girl she had been?

Ruby -- who has had so much cosmetic surgery that she looks more like Donna's sister than her mother -- doesn't think anyone wants to hear about what middle-aged women want, though she's carrying on her own sexy flirtation with Fernando. She thinks stories about young, sweet Donna and lovely, pretty Sophie will make the Bella Donna more attractive. But no one can be only seventeen forever. Maybe I'm too old to judge. Still, I knew Donna in youth and middle age, and I adored both. I've only been with men for decades, but I can't let go of how exciting she was, even exhausted in her forties while she was tearing her hair out trying to plan a wedding and fix a courtyard. That Donna will always dance while the music still goes on. She has her own tales to tell, the story of a heart that never gave up.

And that's the story they should be telling, the journey as well as the destination. Not a contrived tug at the heartstrings to sell a travel destination to rich tourists. Half awake and half in dreams, seeing long forgotten scenes, so the present runs into the past.


End file.
